"“You regret being the person you were. Certainly you have had accomplishments, and you have stood up for your beliefs, however unpopular they may have been, but to yourself you have been a failure. There is no solution; no redemption. You want what everyone wants, to have been as wise and mature earlier in life as you think you are now. . . Maturity means to distrust oneself, while at the same time holding on to your fundamental beliefs, which are the product of decades of experience.”
-Robert Kaplan
I've long had a habit, growing worse as I get older, of not showing up for social events. The thought of being around others has always made me weary, and at a cocktail party or similar gathering I can feel the battery of my soul wearing down rapidly, until finally I have to find a way to slip out the door and simply be alone.
Peg's quite the opposite--she loves a house full of people, and keeps a pretty active dance card. It's not the source of tension you might think; she's actually pretty good at keeping my toxic dose of conviviality at a nonlethal level, while getting just enough for her own emotional needs.
This weekend was a classic display of Donk-style ghosting. I'd signed up for the forty-year reunion of my high school class, a group of people I mostly barely know but sprinkled with a few folks who played a key part in my redemption when my folks marched me to the Delta gate at DFW and sent their unruly sixteen-year-old to go live with his grandparents in 1980. My two academic years at Hemet High School were surely a mixed bag, but overall the arc of the narrative led from beer-swilling screw-up to appointee to the United States Air Force Academy. That place and those people were very good to me.
And several made it clear that they were excited to see me, some who'd gone on to their own distinguished careers and interesting lives.
So what happened?
Work, as has so often been the case, made a demand that I answered with little hesitation. I represent a school that's tangled in a seven-figure dispute over hurricane repairs, and after over two years of wrangling the lawyer for the contractor, an extremely bright young man from a huge firm, expressed a desire to meet in person at my office this past Thursday to sketch out a roadmap for perhaps resolving the case. I wasn't sure why we needed to meet in person, but respected the request and figured he had his reasons to fly in from another city. I cancelled any plans to travel to California for the weekend, and stayed in Panama City for the big meeting.
Which carried a little less substance than I'd hoped. Sure, we worked through the vexingly complex set of variables we'd need to address if the dispute were to settle. But for the life of me I couldn't figure out why this needed to be in person. Then he recounted how he'd actually started his journey via Atlanta the day before, and spent the prior evening at Truist Park watching the Braves play the Phillies in the NLDS. I cancelled my trip so he could go to a baseball game.
But in truth, I was worn out and maybe looking for an excuse not to attend. The trip would cost over $2,000.00, all in, and P would've needed to fly back to New York on a very early Sunday flight from LAX, a hundred miles from Hemet, while I'd be returning to Florida, both getting home around midnight. It was a hell of a lot of travel for a rainy supper at a Mexican restaurant.
This kept us in town to attend the Panama City Symphony's opener this past Saturday. Except . . . we didn't do that, either, electing instead to fly back to ELM so we'd have a day to do laundry and decompress before P returned to the OR this morning. So we left four empty seats to greet the new conductor when he walked onstage. I feel pretty crappy about that, as well.
When I graduated from high school all those years ago, my mom planned a surprise graduation party at her little house a couple blocks from the high school. All went well except that the guest of honor didn't show up, didn't know I was expected, and ended up going to supper with Dad and the other family. My classmate who planned this whole reunion over the weekend attended that party as well, charming my mother with her kindness and intelligence as Mom tried to make the best of it all. My classmate went from a dirt floor shack in the desert to Harvard and now to a successful law practice. I reckon she should've known I'd flake out again, four decades later. We are what we are.
Peg says I can always go next year, but there won't be a forty-first year reunion. Next stop, a half-century. If we're all still alive, maybe we'll see each other then. Of course, hermits don't stop being hermits as we age; quite the contrary, in my family we get weirder and more solitary down the stretch, regardless of our drinking habits. Don't place any bets on me changing my stripes when 2032 comes around.
It's a beautiful fall day out there, slate gray with a palette of oranges, reds, and yellows splashed over the hills, just as God intended October to be.
They're calling for mixed precip by Wednesday. The long dark season begins.
댓글